Streaming media has become prevalent in users' lives. Over the course of time, the types of sources from which users stream media has grown from simple broadcast sources (e.g., over the air television or radio) to a myriad of other sources, like over-the-top (“OTT”) streaming media providers, Internet media distributers, Internet radio stations, and the like.
As streaming media increases in popularity, streaming media providers seek to increase revenue by embedding advertisements in the media streams (e.g., as commercials that are inserted in between playback of portions of a given program or song). Consumers have responded negatively to such advertising, as it is disruptive to the media consumption experience. Thus, technology was developed to either remove advertisements or make advertisements skippable in recorded versions of streaming media, or to offer users alternative content to an advertisement when an advertisement is detected in streaming media. In many cases, however, users may not wish to have to record media in order to avoid advertisements, and instead would like to consume the media when it is aired. Moreover, advertisers and media streaming sources have begun implementing sophisticated technology to disable mechanisms for removing advertisements, thus rendering efforts to thwart avoidance of viewing an advertisement by way of recording or inserting substitute content moot.